In an earlier era, when the United Nations was confronted with warnings of an impending genocide in Rwanda, experts found bureaucratic reasons to do nothing effective. Specifically, when Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, the Commander of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda, saw the bloodshed breaking out in that spring of 1994, he sought permission to intervene from UN headquarters. That request was denied — supposedly because there was no United Nations peacekeeping resolution with a mandate authorizing him to enforce peace.

Four years later, former U.S. president Bill Clinton went to Rwanda to apologize for the inaction from the United States and the international community in Rwanda that allowed a mass genocide to take place. President Clinton said, in part:

“The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began… We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide.”

Such narratives, one expert told me, “confuse the international community and provide cover for terrorists to kill tens of thousands and displace millions. How can desert encroachment explain or justify the mass slaughter of innocent civilians?”

The time has come for the international community to stop all pretense that what is happening in Nigeria is anything less than a genocide. Just as the free world united in the struggle against ISIS in the Middle East, every nation that aspires to the term “civilized” needs to join in ending this next international tragedy-in-the-making before it’s too late.

Matthew Daniels, JD, Ph.D, is Chair of Law & Human Rights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., and the author of Human Liberty 2.0.